Monday, June 28, 2004

Their analysis is fairly weak however, and for an in depth view I would suggest looking at Daily Kos (link provided in the title) for a good review of all the races. Kos is an unrepentant liberal, but I have a hard time finding any problem with his analysis.

Currently he has 8 Republican seats up for grabs in the total of 15. Those are Illinois, Colorado, Alaska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Kentucky and Ohio.

I think there are some rose colored glasses in the final three but he is correct in noting that they are all closer than they should be. Meanwhile, despite the fact that both Colorado and Alaska have a majority of registered Republicanse the Democrats are running better candidates than the Republicans so that difference could be overcome.

Lets agreee that those 8 are all toss-ups however and give the Dem's half of them. Which means that of the 15 Republican seats up for grabs the Republicans go 11-4.

On the Democrat side of the ledger he only has 6 of the 19 seats as up for grabs: Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, South Dakota and Louisiana. He is right here. The other 13 states range from New York, to California to Vermont etc... In almost all of the races the Democrats have both the majority of voters registered and the better candidate. The only one that could be even close among the ones not listed is Washington State with Patty Murray vs. George Nethercutt, but even that race would require a ton of money to be competitive.

Of the rest, Georgia and North Carolina seem like the safest bets. But as with any race who knows. Let's split thses evenly as well, 3-3, so the Democrats go 16-3 in their races.

Currently the Senate is at 51 Republicans; 48 Democrats; 1 Independent, with Jim Heffords, the lone Independent, voting with the Democratic Caucus.

If the races pan out as predicted then the composition will revert to 50 R, 49 D & 1 I, which will be even due to Jeffords allegiance.

So once again it goes back to the President of the Senate, who is the current VP to decide votes. If Bush/Cheney get re-elected then that will be Cheney, if not then who knows?

This is the most likely scenario as we now sit, but once again, as the whole Ryan flap showed, anything can happen between now and election day.